It's funny...coins like DASH are allowed to go up in price and not be called a Ponzi (masternodes sure helped DASH - the promise of free coins forever for holding enough of them and not selling- sounds a bit like lending doesn't it? It basically works exactly the same way - PoS mining/staking isn't much different either except the yearly interest they give you is a fixed percentage instead of variable although the more often you stake, the more it compounds and higher staking amounts tend to pay more often)
DASH was even moaning about Bitconnect to coinmarketcap's Twitter (calling it a Ponzi, no less) when it was rivalling it's billion dollar marketcap and overtaking them. The same day coinmarketcap revised the circulating supply of Bitconnect and it fell from around 6th place to 16th (I can't actually remember the positions but something along those lines).
Staking is no ponzi. When you stake you are rewarded by the fees payed for transactions.
LOL you are not rewarded by the fees. A coin can choose any random staking reward they want in the code. Some like BuzzCoin pay 160% per month compounded (100% per month if you only get one reward a month but as long as you get it every few days it will compound to 160%). It hasn't done too bad. I actually sold too early or would have made about 10 more BTC. Obviously, BuzzCoin is more of a Ponzi than bitconnect as it didn't really have the value of guaranteeing the investment amount when you lend (as long as it was allowed to continue without being a Ponzi - remember the interest and capital release was always less BCC than was lent so it was never operating as a ponzi).
Thing with Dash is that you always have control over your Coins and the rewards for staking are always the same. The developers cant arbitrarily decide to change the rewards without consensus from all the miners and stakers. Main point with ponzis is that you give your Coins over to someone else, and they hold your capital and just pay you the interest (or not). When the price tanks, you can do nothing because they hold your money (and usually never get your initial investment back)
A coin like BuzzCoin is not a full ponzi because you keep control over your money. Coins like that will tend to go to 0 over a long period of time unless there is a hardfork to change the rewards. As price goes down, you always have the option to sell your initial investment plus the interest you've accumulated from staking.
I am probably not following you correctly but did you really mean that it's a Ponzi if you don't have control of the money and they don't pay it back? Bitconnect gave everyone their investments back (at the 15 day average value) and the value only went down because many sold them at the same time. The same would happen with any coin if a lot was dumped in one day. Like I said before, bitcoin has almost double the supply so should be half the value of bitconnect, all other things being equal. So a valuation of a few hundred dollars for bitconnect wasn't excessive. Everyone who spread the misinformation are more to blame for the current value than the investors of the coin. The site is still up and running, so the coin should increase again once they figure out what to do next.
Remember the BitconnectX ICO sells out every day almost immediately and takes in $13million worth of funds each time (although they value BCC at $150 since bitconnect closed the lending). How are so many people investing in it still if everyone thinks it's a scam??? All the people saying it's a scam are probably in the minority.